You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching In. I'm Claire Pedrick and this week we have an open table with a bunch of lovely people who've come to talk about changing hats in coaching. So Michael Kell, you sent me an email and that kicked off this as a concept. So welcome to you, Michael. Thank you. What made you contact us?
Well, If I'm honest, Claire, it was that I was sat in a restaurant, I think, waiting for my daughter, and I was reading a bit more of your simplifying coaching book. And when I say a bit more, that's because I find that when I've read about a page and a half, I'm so saturated with ideas and insights, I have to sort of put the book down. So I remember when I got the book, it was, I thought, wow, this is fantastically short. But actually, it's a very dense book.
I mean that in a good way in that there's so much in it. So anyway, I had to put the book down and I was so sort of impressed with the content and the way you put the idea so simply that I just wanted to get in touch with you. So I did that and then I thought, well, while I'm messaging Claire, why don't I cheekily ask if I could go on your podcast, which I did. And then I thought, well, at that point, I think this was sort of... maybe November time a few months ago.
At that point, one of the things I was grappling with definitely was this tension between coaching and mentoring, when and how to give advice, that kind of thing. So that's what I thought. In my context, that comes up because my background is as an economist. So that's one group of people that I've done some working with where that tension tends to come up quite, you know, regularly. So sorry, that's a long answer, but that was that was why I got in touch.
It's a great answer and thank you because it's people like you who send emails in that give us some really good ideas for subjects. So Michael and I set a date and then I sent out an email that said who wants to come and talk about this? So the brief that I've shared with people is this, while some professional bodies like the ICF have a very pure definition of coaching, it's common for people coming to coaching to be unclear what we offer.
Sometimes the organization who commissions us has commissioned us to do a combination of coaching and mentoring. What's ethical? What's partnership? What's useful? So also to the table today, we have Gary Crotez, Mark Mercer, Matthew Raywood, Nathan Whitbread and Ivan Yong. Hello everybody. So let's hear from you. Gary, give us your... your why I'm here nugget. Why I'm here, because I have a lot of hats.
And we were actually talking about this subject very recently actually about particularly I find so I coach quite a lot of senior people, and quite a lot of high performing people. And there's a benefit from being able to wear multiple hats. To some extent, I wonder whether there's an expectation of more when somebody, particularly when somebody's paying a lot of money for a coaching session or relatively a lot of money for a coaching session.
And there's something that you said to me a long time ago, which was so long as you're both in the same conversation, it's kind of okay, but how do you figure out that you're both in the same conversation? So I come to coaching, I've been in coaching for about five or so years now in total. My background is a once a doctor, but a lot as a strategy consultant, as strategy director, and along the way as a professional dancer.
But I guess one of the one of the areas that particularly comes up is the different hats is an opinion on their situation, which is sort of a mentoring kind of thing. And then the coaching questions that leave the accountability right in their lap. And that balance is a very interesting one to dance around. Yeah, and I think the other thing. You didn't say that we did that we met very recently in real life and talked about this Gary. In a cocktail bar. In a cocktail bar with other people.
With other people. I think one of the things, one of the questions for me that's interesting is particularly if our preferred default is to offer, sometimes we can be tempted to offer where we are not qualified or insured or anything else. So there's, so there's a number of different conversations here. One is what you're describing, Michael, which is I am, I am very experienced and professionally qualified in this area where people might ask me questions.
And then at the other end we have, I am very opinionated and I like telling people what I think. So, so we need to just be aware that when we talk about this listeners, we just encourage you to think about where are you on that spectrum? Cause I think that's a really important. question. So Matt Raywood, hello. Hello, can you hear me loud and clear? Yeah. Superb. So tell us a bit about you and what made you say, yes, please let me come. No, sure.
So I think because in my role within the Royal Navy, we wear many hats as well. And that's very much within that leadership space and coaching mentoring come well and surely underneath that. And as the Royal Navy's new lead coaching advisor, I get asked a lot of when do we find it acceptable to tell? the thing that we say a lot in the Navy for coaching is ask, no, not tell. And that's how we sort of neatly wrap up coaching in a nutshell.
But I have a lot of in a recent course I did with a lot of commanding officers, they said to me, when can we tell the people what to do? And I said, well, when you bottom out everything I've asked in, but then you then switch from coaching to mentoring. And it depends how you want to contextualize that. And when you work in a very vicar environment, which is what the Royal Navy does, it's intriguing where we can weave in a coaching dialogue to then a mentoring dialogue.
Yeah. And there's something about timing, isn't there? Yes. And our preference might be to offer early. Yes, it is. Especially when you want things done. Yeah. Yeah. I always think that the real perfect storm is when I'm a really hungry mentee, so somebody who really respects their mentor. is in conversation with a really wise mentor. And the danger is that you just get this enormous transfer of information that nobody knows what to do with.
Well, welcome Matt and congratulations on your new job. Thank you so much. Nathan Whitbread, hello. Hi Claire, how are you doing? Good, good. Yes. So I guess I'm here today with Mike. So the business I saw working is this area of neurodiversity in the workplace. And I'm particularly interested in changing hats because...
One of the wrestles that you have in this space is that if you have lived experience, then it's how do you hold that separately from what you're doing in the coaching space when people are screaming at you to share it and do that appropriately. But also one of the things that I've come across a bit more lately is just actually people who are in real problems at work and unsafe and.
then it's just that whole thing about when are we changing hats and saying this is no longer a coaching conversation, this is a safeguarding conversation, this is about making you safe and safe enough. And that's been really challenging for me actually, I think I'm starting to navigate it but I think it's something that needs a bigger conversation because lots of people are pretending it's okay and it's not. Yeah, thank you. Welcome. Mark Mercer. Hello. Hi there.
yeah, so for me, it's, it's about, I guess sometimes when I'm wearing a coaching hat, I can feel a little, constrained and says a little bit about having a cat with a bit more of a multifaceted, hat. That's one of the things I'm curious about. And the other thing I'm curious about is, yeah, how do you, how do you change hats? So it doesn't feel quite so clunky. So yeah, so I've been coaching for sort of in this space for about 35 years. I now work internally in a school.
Great. Well, thank you, Mark. And welcome Ivan Young. Hi, thanks, Claire, for having me again. So tell us a bit about what you do. Okay. Well, generally I'm a mentor. In fact, I just celebrated my 10th year anniversary mentoring at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I've been doing mentoring there for 10 years now. And recently they changed a program of the mentoring into team mentoring. And I've been asked to pioneer this new team mentoring method that they've put in place.
It's actually quite surprising for me because they have been running mentoring for so long, for about 20 years now. And it's a very well run program, but they still wanted to change because they saw changes. happening in the world and they think and they believe that mentoring needs to change as well to accommodate what's happening in the world to prepare, you know, the undergraduates for the world that is to come. I also mentor startups in innovation. I'm an intro investor myself.
I invest into startups and I mentor them. Over the years, I've seen at least two to three successful cases, one of them being in Malaysia. The founder is a female founder and she's now celebrated. a startup founder in Malaysia, quite successful. We put in some money and it happens. And I'm also the co -president for EMCC Asia Pacific now, on top of my role as the head of social responsibility initiative global for EMCC Global. Fantastic. And I have a keen interest in research as well.
So I've been doing quite a lot of work on research with EMCC, research funds, researching into how we can bridge the gap between practitioner and researcher. So we're doing a little bit more work in that and a little bit more. And recently we won a grant actually for AI coaching. How can we use, do some quick research on AI and coaching? There you go, Claire. So I have got the question I was going to ask you and then I've got the question that's just come up.
So let's hold the one about team mentoring because that's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that. So we'll come back to that second if we may. So Michael. What are you thinking after we've all arrived? Well, I'm obviously struck by the kind of richness of the topic. And I suppose I it's it's it's clarifying for me how I was seeing it through one, or maybe two or three lenses. But having just listened to that, there's many more than the three lenses, perhaps I was thinking about.
So yeah, that's why I'm thinking so far. So what are the lenses that you're thinking about right now? Well, the lens I'm thinking about is I'm afraid of a very sort of brass tacks question about niches. And as a relatively new coach, I'm grappling with that question and feeling a tension between. I absolutely understand the logic of why you might need a niche and why a niche makes sense in terms of. especially at the early stages of a coaching career. You know, the logic of having a clear niche.
And at the same time, that seems to me in complete tension in my case, with a desire early on in my coaching career to be open minded, I really don't know kind of who and what I'd most like to work with. And those two things are really intention for me.
And I think that kind of links to the changing hats question in the sense that what I think so far anyway, the way I've the most useful way of reconciling that tension is to be very clear in my own mind and actually also sort of overly clear on my website that I do, I'm a coach and I'm a mentor and I position the mentoring as if you are someone who is either in the field of economics, similar to the kind of field that I worked in and know about, then perhaps you want me to be your mentor.
And then kind of for all the other stuff, there's me as a coach, which is a bit, it is clunky and it is overly kind of prescriptive. And of course there's lots of gray areas, but I've just found that, that device, I suppose, to separate out those two roles in a rather exaggerated way has helped me both in the way I engage in a particular session, but also it's helped me with this dilemma about, you know, do I have to have a niche?
Yeah, I've got an obvious niche, but is that how much do I want to commit to that first? You know, so those are probably two lenses. Interesting. And something that comes up for me, Michael, is the thing about credibility and authority. Because you've clearly got high credibility and high authority in a particular sector type of work. And you can't undo that because that's formed you as a human. Yeah. Yeah. And that will be inside you when you do whatever it is you do.
Yeah, which prompts a thought for me, I would say so far one of the few pieces of kind of academic or quaver academic literature I've read around coaching that I found helpful actually was one that looked at this question about the link between, I guess, the extent to which you sort of still hold on to your pre coaching identity as you become a coach.
And it The way I interpret that is, if you if you're still holding on to that, well, the more tightly you hold on to your pre coaching identity, the more likely that is to sort of bleed into and, in one sense, pollute how you are as a coach. Which is kind of complementary to what you were saying, Claire, I think in that you're right, because you know, you can't you don't want to totally erase 35 years of your identity. That's not authentic. But I think you do what I found.
I do feel that I have kind of left behind that older identity to to a, you know, a reasonable extent. And I think that helps with this separation. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. Matt, you're nodding. I am this because it's the authenticity part really resonates, especially when you say about how you have so much of a previous background of your profession. So as an engineer by trade, we've, you know, I've had 17 years of fixing helicopters.
But within that, when you want to coach someone and someone that's completely detached from that, you bring yourself to that point to have the discussion, but you also don't want to have so much bias within that. And so what sort of resonating with me in in in what was being said about by Michael is, I wonder when the tone needs to change in the conversation, when you're going from coaching to mentoring, and how fluid can you make that?
I do wonder because when you go in with the premise of right, I want to coach first. And that's what I said bias for myself, that's what I try and do is try and coach them as first till last. But can I make that transition fluid from the hat? So when I got my kaleidoscope eye on there, I say, okay, well, this person's clearly is going to a mentoring conversation.
How can we make this as spook as possible so it's not clunky and it's not going to become odd, but a person will come detached from conversation. So for me, as you say that, Matt, there's something about what normal language can you use to transition from one to the other? Because it's, it's not, would you like me to mentor you now? Would you let me to coach you? I mean, it's something about really normal thing, but I did, I don't know if you noticed, but you said something there about tone.
And that's made me really think because some of the stuff in the human bio and the coach about tone, you know, the difference between the offer tone. And the statement tone. I just wonder whether there's something in that Gary, you've got a thinking face on. I feel like I'm about to say something really provocative. And maybe that's good. please. So, as you know, Claire, I have lived my life halfway between the UK and the US coaching environments.
And I talked to many, many coaches here in the UK, and I talked to many, many coaches in the US. And I'm sitting here listening to us together having this conversation and thinking this is a very UK conversation, because it contains words like constraint and struggle. And we're all trying very hard to do things the right way and not... say the wrong things and make it awkward and all those kinds of things.
I'm thinking of all the conversations I've had with US coaches and as many over the last particularly sort of couple of years or so. I know some US coaches who don't think a lot about it, but I know a lot of US coaches that really think a lot about it, but I don't feel like they struggle with it. And in my mind, what I'm thinking about here is why... Why does, and here's my sweeping generalisation, an average UK coach have a level of struggle?
We're all sitting there going, you know, we might get this wrong. And the average UK, US coach sweeping generalisation is relaxing into being themselves, even if sometimes they might tread on a few toes, get things a bit wrong. And I'm thinking about this particular client I'm working with at the moment, who's in South America. She's the CEO of an emerging luxury brand.
And our coaching conversations are... somewhere on the spectrum at different times, sometimes it is absolutely pure ICF coaching. And sometimes it is merging more towards mentoring because for a variety of reasons there are other things of the hats I could wear that could be helpful.
And I wrote down three things that... I think of to say, am I comfortable in this conversation that I'm doing the right thing, that I'm doing an okay thing, that I feel that I could go back to you Claire and say, yeah, you know, I didn't break all the rules. And there's three things where one, and we've had this conversation, my clients and I have had this conversation. One, I am here for you, not the business. As soon as I'm here for the business, I could be.
some kind of organisation consultant or strategist or something like that. But whilst I am here talking to you about you, then that sort of places it in more of the coaching space. So I can ask the same questions of a person, but not an organisation and it's coaching, not something else. The second is even when sometimes we can have a conversation where she might ask me to offer an opinion and I might offer one, I'm really clear. that accountability is with them and only with them.
So I go, if I say something here and you choose to do something with that, that's entirely on you. I'm not in any way, shape or form recommending you do something, because I don't know. I'm not close enough to it and neither of them is it my job to know that. And the third is the thing I said earlier, which is, it's really important that we both know at all times we are in the same conversation.
And so we're regularly checking in on, are we both still in a... this sort of coaching or close to coaching kind of conversation. And the last thing was actually to what you were saying, Matt, I used to be a professional dancer, professional ballroom dancer. And there was a moment quite late in our careers as professional dancers where our whole thinking about dance changed. And it's when our coach said to us, you're taking the choreography step by step.
So here's some language of the foxtrot, for example. You dance the feather step, then you dance the reverse turn, then you dance the feather finish, then the three step, then an up turn in the corner. That's how you get from one end of the floor to the other. He said, you don't, you start here, you end there and in the middle you do some stuff. And as soon as he said that, you broke down those, this three steps has a beginning, middle and end, and then you stop and then you do the next thing.
And I, and I'm hearing us collectively, Swipping Generalization, our UK way, thinking about coaching conversation like... Did we do Stoker's and then did we finish Stoker's and then we move into conversation and did I have to stop at this point and say now we shift to mentoring or conversation? It feels to me like how I used to dance where it's like did this step, did I do that? Okay, now move to the next step. And in my coaching conversations, I'm trying to let that go and just go.
I start at the beginning of the time, I end at the end of the time, in the middle stuff happens. And I've got to trust that over time, that stuff's going to get better. So there's my brain to page, but that's kind of, that's what's going on in my head, Claire, if that's any use. So you're talking about flow, but I think there was a bit of an interesting thing that you said there.
There were many interesting things you said there, but one of the interesting things that you said is that your experience of US coaches is that they're a lot less hung up about it. And I think what's interesting is that the US coaches generally follow the ICF tribe, whereas coaches in the UK follow all kinds of tribes. what I think I'm picking up from what you said. But British coaches are a bit more worried about the ICF coaching police. I think that's right.
And it's really important to say, you know, I'm very clear about this, not being so concerned about it, not so anxious about it, maybe it doesn't mean they're not thinking about it. And they don't appreciate they really do. But they're just not. There's a level of imposter syndrome that I think in the UK we have habitually in coaching, where there's a lot of coaches going, sure, it's quite perfect. And I'm going, well, no, we're not perfect.
And I'm, you know, of course we're not perfect because I haven't been doing it that long, you know, and, and, and this is a long, long term game. And Claire, I know, you know, you've got insight on how to start to let go a bit of that imposter syndrome. that we will have, you know, coming out of training, training kind of creates that because you suddenly know stuff that you didn't know before, but now you worry that you're not doing it. And rule bound doesn't have flow.
So there's something about, you know, Jung said, learn your theories as well as you can and put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. But there's something about how do we nod to the rules in a way that means that we're not just being random. and yet be human to Mark. Yeah, so I guess I think sometimes with coaching, and I guess this is me sometimes like you can simplify things and kind of go, tell, ask or you know, something like that, which I know is important.
But I guess sometimes we forget that coaching has, we do actually have much more freedom than we think with coaching. So just because I'm wearing a coaching hat, doesn't mean that I'm constrained in a box and I've got a it's, you know, we if we think about the objective of coaching or bringing people up, we need to be feeling free in the same way.
So there's something about, you know, a bit like kind of Brenny Brown talks, where she kind of puts her name and says, I'm this this storyteller, blah, blah, blah, all these various things, I think we need to have a few things with the word coach, that kind of free us up a little bit still with coaching in kind of bold, but knowing that actually we can do stuff that just because we, like your reframing of offer and offering with a question, we can
do stuff that is leaning towards mentoring or leaning towards information in some way. And we're still coaching, as long as we're doing it in a light way. And we've got that coaching ethic and mindset in the foreground. Yeah, and offer versus tell is quite a subtle difference, but people will feel it. and experience it. There's a video on our supervision community, which you might have listened to, which is about advice. There's nothing more annoying than somebody.
In fact, I heard it in a recording this morning when the thinker comes to the coaching and says, I'd like you to give me advice. And the coach goes, well, I'm not going to give you advice because this isn't about advice. What they've done is they've just told you instead of it being a conversation, they've just gone. I am about to tell you the rules and the rules are that I don't tell you anything, but I'm telling you now. So, so the dance matters, Michael, I can see you're thinking some things.
Yeah, I was thinking about the point about freedom. And I can, I'm guessing that as you know, freedom. presumably in a large part comes with experience. So I'm someone who's relatively inexperienced, so that's where I am. And I think what I've found helpful for giving myself freedom is just hanging on to a few very, very simple rules that just give a bit of a framework.
And the one I was thinking of that at the moment, anyway, I'm finding helpful for myself is just to think, okay, a coaching session has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It may sound a bit trivial, but it because it's very simple, but just remembering that feels like it gives me okay.
So there's the whole of that middle When it can be pretty free because I've got the safety of clinging on to I know that I've done You know, I'm five minutes 15 minutes whatever at the start trying to just put some our arms around the question and you know, I Well, I know that I've now got, you know, if all else fails, I've got a couple of things I can ask at the end that will usually seem to sort of bring some shape to what we've just been talking about.
And I find just that gives me the sort of scaffolding to know that, well, in the middle then, let's just see where it goes. Absolutely. And my middle question is that's forming is, do we both know what we do? Are we both in agreement what we're doing in the middle? And, and, and being in agreement might mean that we both agree that we don't know what we're doing, we're trying to work it out, which is absolutely fine.
And I think when it doesn't work is that I think I'm doing something and you think that we're doing something else. So there's something about some level of agreement that we're both a little bit clear what this thing is that we're doing. Because otherwise I might think I'm asking you questions and you might think I'm telling you what to do. That isn't going to work.
But if we're both kind of generally in agreement, and we can agree that we have no idea what we're doing, and that's OK because we both agree. Go on Michael. I'm thinking... But you can't, maybe I'm being overly literal in my thinking about that point, Claire, but you can't, you know, every 30 seconds check in and say, are we still on the same page? No. Right. So there has to be a bit of play between those check -in points where you're not sure that you're on the same page.
You know, and you just got to go with that, right? Yeah. And I would say that the ethical thing is don't go into a new book. Okay, right, right. So yeah, okay. Right. It's the same page thing is interesting, isn't it? Because if you if you're reading a book, and you leave it and you come back, you kind of pick up where you left off, but you probably don't because you might be one or two pages behind or one or two pages ahead, but you're sort of in the same chapter.
So I think both being on the same chapter page -ish is different from suddenly we're not on the same book, because that really does get us into places which isn't serving. Because if you think I'm telling you and I think that I'm facilitating you to think that is a very strange dynamic. But even if it does go, sorry, one last thing, even if you do find yourself there, you can bring it back, right? Yeah, yeah.
So, I suppose what I'm saying to myself is, you know, don't be so worried that you might end up in, you might be on different chapters for a little bit, but that's all a disaster. It's never too late unless you just decide that you're going to do your own thing. Right. And and dance your own dance, write your own book, whatever it is, that's when it that's when we start really losing connection.
Because then we're in then we're in different conversations, which is the conversation that you mentioned, Gary earlier, you know, we need to be in the same conversation. Gary's thinking something with his thinking face. Nathan, you're thinking something with your thinking face. Who's going to speak? I can speak if you'd like. I was thinking about David Brent there with the whole doing your own special dance thing. That's a very English reference.
Well, obviously the American version of The Office. For our global listeners, look up The Office on YouTube. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think there's a great illustration there because they did two series of the English version of The Office and they did 25, didn't they, of the American version just to show the difference in the way you approach a certain subject.
But yeah, I think the things that really jumped out about me and I've really picked up on Gary's thing about perfectionism and how actually it felt like, and I think I see this, I've definitely seen this main coach is that... when you're aiming for perfection, it can become quite clunky because you're so focused on getting the technical bits right, you forget about how it all joins together.
And that for me really came back to this idea of moving through the gears when you're changing from one thing to another, which is something I kind of stole from someone else, this idea of actually how are we changing gear effectively as we're moving from having a different style of conversation and being super clear about what we're doing as well. A bit like you were saying about whether we're in the same conversation. Because I've...
I've certainly noticed that where you think you're having one style of conversation and someone else has a very different perception. And I think sometimes that's about power as well, because, or perceived power in terms of your knowledge or your expertise or whatever it is that that is that comes to mind.
Another thing I just wanted to throw in was, it's actually something that came up today that was something I was working with, this idea of good enough for now in terms of what we're doing, because we can always do good enough for now. and then we can make it a bit better later or next time we meet or they can take it away and make it better.
Actually, it's probably even better because that kind of shifts that whole that kind of whole perfectionism thing away because we're saying if we're doing it good enough for now so that we can move forwards and you as the thinker can change something, then that's probably pretty good work, I would argue. And I think that... When I think about what makes coaching successful, one of the things that makes it successful is it's still happening after the end of session one.
So I hear a lot of people who come and they say, I've tried coaching before, it didn't work out, didn't quite fit with the coach, whatever it was. Usually that was clear very quickly and they felt like this isn't really going anywhere. I'm not really getting anything from it. I don't understand how this person can come with nothing, no opinion, just questions and how, you know, They haven't got anything from coaching.
And I was talking to a world leading scientist on my podcast a couple of years ago. And he said, one of the things that he wants to do when he is developing young scientists in his lab, he said, I just need them to have one thing they discover, however small in year one of science, otherwise they quit. And then there's no career in science ahead of them. So he said, it doesn't, it doesn't need to be a big thing. They just need to get some kind of win.
And it's interesting, I'm doing a project at the moment where I'm at those workshops that are going to go ahead and I'm doing literally just one hour with each person in those workshops, we just have an hour together. And so it's a kind of one and done sort of thing. I'm sitting there going, this isn't about building a long -term relationship, particularly it's just about, I'd be really happy if you felt there was one thing that you took from this conversation that changed your thinking.
And there was somebody I was working with this morning and it was in one way, A thing that we as coaches are a bit terrified of happening in a coaching conversation. So I asked some good, nice opening question. And then the person I was working with started saying stuff and started downloading and expressing, and it was all kind of bouncing around and going off in all sorts of different tangents.
And for the first 10 minutes of it, I was sitting there going, how do I stop this flow and how do I... find a way to get a question, how do I shape the conversation? And then I suddenly sat there and I went, the longer this goes on, the bigger a realisation it's going to be when they figure out that they don't have to do that. And so I just let it run. And we were 25 minutes in before I asked a question. And then my question was something like, what do you notice in the last 25 minutes?
Nice question. Right. And they went... Yeah, I think I did a little bit and actually with good self awareness and then it went on again. So another 15 minutes went on. So just that one question sparked another flow. You've said flow twice. And that's what it's all about. It's all about flow. And as long as they're in flow, they're in flow. Yeah. And all they need to do is to be in flow. And, and we can be really good at stopping them being in flow.
Or we can be really good at supporting them to be in flow and then let them be let them be in flow because flow and Alistair Bradley if you're listening you were referenced in the book and I really want you to come to the coaching in and talk to us about flow. 45 minutes into one hour conversation, the 150 mile an hour brain spin turned into 30 mile an hour and we landed on the word control. And I was like, I said not a lot in that coaching conversation.
And if I had done what my instinct was making me do in the last first 15 minutes, we would never would have got to that place. Yeah, so I just hearing what you're saying, and then particularly this word flow. I think for me, it's like the question of how do I stay in flow? Well, I'm changing hats and changing back again. So how can I do that in a way where I'm not kind of thing? I've got to get back really quickly. I'm in the wrong place.
And it's so it's almost like, how can I be comfortable with the idea? Actually, this is really useful for this person to change hats here. And, you know, kind of not allow all those kind of body symptoms go up on that kind of hurrying up going on in your in your system. And just rest with the changing hat, be comfortable with the changing hat. So you can come back and it flows.
I think that's the bit for me is it's not not feeling like you need to rush away from that hat so much that it ruins your flow and they start picking up on that flow or something like that. You said a really beautiful thing inside that mark. I heard, and because there's something isn't there, which is how do. How do I stop myself getting into so much flow that they stop being in flow? So if we're going to offer, how do we offer enough that they are keeping in flow?
Because the danger is that if we become the Oracle, then they become passive. So it's, it's so it's how do you, how do you just whatever you do, facilitate them to keep in flow, whatever flow is for is for them. Hmm. And I guess it's no I guess it's both also what I'm noticing, I guess is, I guess I do notice tension when I change hat, I guess tension in short, tension in in my body, sort of, you know, it's almost like, it's I'm asking, is this okay?
You know, it's kind of ingrained in me, you know, am I am I so breaking the rules at this point, you know, it's kind of that stuff coming up for me. So it's So I guess my is how do I stay in peace for that 30 seconds or that minute? So that when it comes in, I'm also able to really pay attention to them in the whole process. Yeah. So I'm really interested in how we're doing. So what do we know now that we didn't know when we started? Or indeed, what questions are we raising?
I've got a bit of a question. I'm sorry.
I just think I'm sorry Mark said that made me think you talked about that whole thing about we go somewhere else but we've got to get back to where we've already decided we felt like we've got to get back to where we've already decided we think we should end up and I was just wondering actually if we go somewhere like we change hats it might be okay to finish that part of the conversation in that place and not need to leave it because that's what the thinker needs to kind of move forwards and
that's I'm more talking to myself I'm not going to sell you mark I'm just thinking about that actually. How often have I thought where I think this conversation needs to end up? And that's probably not the place it needed to end up. Interesting. Is that premise wrong? So the premise of the conversation is how do we change hats? What if we don't? What if we're simultaneously wearing a few hats? And being human.
So here's the, again, here's the dancer analogy that, you know, you think about Mikhail Brishnikov and Rudolf Nureyev and Akram Khan, three completely different dancers. dancing a different style, no point do you go, they're now doing the ballet bit and now they're doing the contemporary bit and now they're doing the something else bit. They just dance in their style, which has flavours and facets and nuances to it. But there's not like a break point.
And if there were, then they'd probably trip over it in the same way that we're worried about tripping over. When I, you know, lean over and drop that hat on the floor and pick up the other hat, will the thinker have noticed that I did it? Well, probably. because we chose to make it a thing that we're changing the hat. So I don't quite know how this manifests in the ethical sort of constraints of what we're talking about.
But there's a principle here that it feels like if we're thinking about, I'm wearing this constrained hat and then I can take it off and wear that constrained hat. Well, of course, it's going to feel like there's edges to it. So is our premise wrong? That we have to change hats? Thank you, Michael. I don't know if this relates to what Gary was just saying. Maybe it does. I was thinking about the dimension we've been, I think, mostly talking about changing hats within one particular session.
And I'm also thinking about the possibility of changing hats as you progress through a series of sessions and as you develop a relationship. Because when I think back to when I was a coachee, and what I remember is a going back a bit now, but what I remember is that at the start of the relationship, it was very important to me that I got advice. I think for me as a coachee, that was partly partly, it's partly just wanting to get the information, but partly like I'm testing out this person.
Do they know their stuff? Because I didn't know when I was a coachee, I didn't know what the philosophy of pure coaching is. And in a sense, I didn't care. I was just in a mess. And I needed some help. right?
And what it felt to me like I really needed was advice and I got it and it built confidence and it you know perhaps I don't know what was going on in my coach's head but now looking back maybe he understood that and then you know that he thought okay well we'll be like this now and then gradually over time you know the relationship changed as my confidence in him and the relationship improved over time.
And that's the thing isn't it between So being a driving instructor is coaching somebody to drive. But I actually would like my driving instructor or I would like the driving instructor that drives around our estate to also be coaching that person to do that safely. And then we've got kind of transformational coaching on the other end. So there is a whole spectrum. I'm wondering what you're thinking, Matt, what insights have you had so far? Many, many insights.
but I'm making the odd word here and there. And one of the things that come to my mind is, do we as coaches, when we're looking at the conversation, do we feel it and do we see it when advice is needed? So therefore we do not lose ourself and coachy client, the person we have in front of us. And that's probably a better word to use, isn't it? The person. When do we lose them? And is it a question of us losing them?
or them losing us because in the end, they're the ones who should be leading the dance in terms of the conversation. And the other bit to tag on to this is, I'm thinking about this in terms of models, and coaching models that we have, does that form a barrier and a level of constraints when we're having conversations because we look at the models that we have, and then we say, well, hang on a minute, if therefore we're looking to stay within this, this rigid framework.
does that for make it very, very difficult to keep a good flow from coaching to mentoring when required? And therefore disengages from enabling feel, or even to see it in both the person's words and body language. Sorry, I noticed a lot, a lot there. Sorry, apologies. But that's really useful because what you've, what you've highlighted there is that we're a person having a conversation with another person.
Yeah. And the thing I think that makes it a bit distinctive is that the conversation is primarily about them and not about us. But they might need a bit of offering there. As long as it doesn't become about us. And that's where the danger of the hat changing is that they make it about us. They go, well, that was really interesting. Tell me more about that. which can be a collusion to stop thinking. So is the person that we are in conversation with in flow? Are they thinking?
Are they getting new insights? Are they moving forward? Are they getting what they need? And what's the least that we need to do to facilitate that to happen? of Gary's story about how he said so little in the conversation. Yeah. Which if you know me well, that doesn't happen very often. It's a wonderful feeling when that does happen. It's only happened once. It's only happened once.
And it's when I had to appear, because this is the thing within the Navy, we have, you know, our hierarchical system. So we wear rank on our uniforms. And I've had people come to me and say that can sometimes be a barrier as well, in terms of conversation. And that is a no known for sure.
But I had a peer come to me and they wanted to offload and I constantly made it a coaching conversation and I think very similar first 25 minutes I think I then let them you know stop naturally asked one question and then they just actually went okay, and they walked away and that was it I thought they then came back like two days later said thank you so much for that.
That was really really good I was like, okay, that's cool, but The power of it can be quite something just to give flow and they worked it out on themselves. I which is still coaching dialogue. There's a phrase that Matt that you use, which I really liked, which is, you talked about coaching by feel. Yes. And then I wrote underneath coaching by feel, coaching in the dark.
And as I was writing that you said, when I had this badge on my uniform, and they knew I was a whatever, then it changed the dynamic. And I remembered a conversation Claire, you and I have had in the past where you were talking about coaching in a language you don't understand, where the person responds in Swahili. and you happen not to be fluent in this. I do understand that. Okay, okay. But when I was, I was a scientist many, many years ago, not very good one.
And I happened to be doing my experiments in a building without the right lab equipment. And I had to expose some x -ray plates in that building that didn't have a proper dark room. And therefore I had to do my experiments. in a cupboard in the pitch black, black, black dark. And so I had to do my experiments entirely by feel because if I if I had any light, then it would expose the plates.
And, and I remember then, and I still feel I'm quite good in pitch black now, because I had to learn for about two years to do quite a lot of work in the complete dark. And it, it was just making me think about how much are we forming assumptions and creating a lot of these edges by all the stuff that isn't the feel, the naturalness, the let it go and just go with it and trusting our training and our experience.
And maybe that comes back to where I was starting about the difference I see in the UK and the US sweeping generalisations is that in the UK, we are really concerned about the edges and looking at them. And in the US, I feel like people are kind of going, I do my best work. as best as I can. And if they don't like it, it won't come back. And that's okay. But I've just, I'm just going to do my best and it's not perfect. And it plays back to coaching by feel. That's my phrase that I heard.
Which is the dance. Well, what an interesting conversation. We could go on forever. We'll definitely have to have another one. Must do. Have to. Because there's something, isn't there, about being natural and being normal. There's also something I think about not leading. But that does, but when we're together, we're kind of together. So that doesn't mean not leading, but it means not running out in front. I took our neighbor's dog for a walk yesterday and she was in pulling mode.
And you don't want to be working with a coach because my shoulder was really pulled for two hours on this walk. She was pulling. And that's, that's what it can feel like sometimes, isn't it? When we follow, follow somebody who feels like they're in the lead. But today, when I took her for a walk, she was right next to me the whole time. We were together.
And that's what we want in the coaching space, whether it's coaching or mentoring or whatever it is, we want to be together, traveling together in a general direction. So as we come to an end today, let's just hear from everybody. What's the biggest thing that you're going to keep thinking about? Mine is definitely that idea of coaching by feel and thinking about how am I tuning in to feel as opposed to tuning into information, model, steps, process, that stuff. Right.
I think for me, I think I think I'm expanding the way I see, see, see coaching and it's kind of rich schemata kind of all its richness. And giving myself more permission to have more range within my, the way I coach. And I'm sort of feeling like maybe this stuff about changing hats. Yes, we need to be explicit, but the issues around it are more about us as a coach and our own comfort around it, rather than anything really to do with the thinker.
So I think there's something about us getting really comfortable, you know, expanding what we do and being comfortable with that, but also when it's right to change and being comfortable with that change. So that's my sense. Yeah, and flow, flow, flow, flow. Yeah, I'm thinking about flow. There is the kind of contrarian in me that is pushing back a little bit and wondering whether there's also something as a coach, you occasionally throw some sand into the wheels. Totally.
Which that's not, well, that doesn't feel to me like flow. I guess it could be. you may be going with your own flow that right now is when I throw some sand into the wheels. That's courageous disruption isn't it? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, flow is important, but like I say, the contrarian in me is pushing back a bit, but I'm not sure I can articulate what the contrarian is trying to say yet. So I'll think some more about that.
The thing I like about you saying you throw some sand in the wheels is that what you didn't say was you divert from the tarmac onto the sand. So that would be totally shifting the focus of the conversation. What you've said is you just throw in some disruption and see what happens. Yeah, because I think sometimes flow, what can appear to be flow is actually just a kind of rehearsed path. absolutely. Story that you're hearing, right?
Maybe this is something I've been tuning into recently in some of my sessions. And that's when I'm thinking, OK, I've got to throw some sound into it. Completely. This is just, yeah. Because flow doesn't sound flowy. That's a deep technical description. Okay. Because when it sounds flowy, usually it's not new thinking or emergent or anything else.
So if it sounds like once upon a time there was a story and a long story, and I'm going to tell you the whole story, you could say that sounded flowy, but actually that's just not productive. Whereas flow often sounds like, and then this, so there's. So there's a dissonance in the cadence of flow. So it's all a bit upside down. We'll definitely have to have you back. Who hasn't spoken about what you're taking away?
Matt and Matt. Sure. I think it was mentioned earlier, which was absolutely wonderful, and it's been consistently ringing in my head, was how to let go. And I think that's a wonderful thing. And... to let go of a conversation and just hold it lightly. Maybe something like that in the dialogue between person to person. And it's something that I'm starting to see a little bit more in place of work, which is wonderful.
Where I mentioned earlier about how we have some people with different ranks, but that may be pregenerational, maybe because we're changing our mindsets, that now is coming down a bit more. And I do see it more. And when people do those coaching, dialogues. It's kind of cool to see. But I think it's been that I will take away from this conversation, just to remind myself to hold it lightly, for sure. Thank you, Matt. Has everyone spoken?
Yeah, so the thing that really resonated for me was actually when Matt was talking about uniforms, because I've had this thing for a while in the coaching space that we're called to remove our uniforms and act more like operators in terms of like, so if you know, if you have special services, they don't. have uniforms quite often because no one needs to know who the rank is because it's done based on what you're doing.
And I just think that's really helpful that we operate as who we are and we bring who we are into the space person to person. And the other thing that's got me thinking, which I'm going to take away, and I know it's not for now, it's just that whole friend coach friend thing, because there's great coaching relationships can sometimes convert into friendships. And my dilemma is, how or if that is even appropriate to bring that back into the coaching space at some point.
I think it's doable, but I'm just, I'm asking myself questions about it. Which goes back to what Michael said about throwing sand into the wheel. And if you can't throw sand into the wheel, then you've gone off. Absolutely. You've probably worked out by now that Ivan isn't in the same time zone or in the same space as the rest of us in this call. So let's go back. to Ivan in Hong Kong and hear his insights about coaching from standing in the shoes of a mentor. Experience you can't mentor.
You can coach but you can't mentor. So a mentor needs to have the experience that you know that you can that the mentee doesn't have because they're freshened up. But the problem with mentoring when you have experience is that people come to you and they're looking for answers. They somewhat you know want you to become like a consultant like what should I do? because you have experience in this area. I'm trying to be an accountant and you're an accountant.
So you have 15 years of accounting experience. Can you tell me what to do next? What should I do? Well, the challenge in that is that can you hold your answers and prompt them to actually do the thing that you think they should be doing based on your experience. And that's true coaching. I can give you an example, Clarence. So I have my mentor of 20 years. He is actually a real, you know, real gentleman. I just introduced him to my mentee.
So my mentee got to meet my mentor whom I met at the same age as her. This year, last year. So it's fantastic. I mean, like the experience is crazy. I mean, like my mentor meets me when I was in my twenties. Now my mentee whom I met when I'm my mentor's age now gets to meet my mentor. So like that's a three generational thing. Grandparenting, grand mentoring. Yeah, it's crazy.
And. When I met my mentor, because I was actually from Malaysia and I graduated from Singapore and I came out here looking for a job. And then, you know, the letters were not working. I couldn't get an interview. And I thought, okay, maybe I should go and network for a job. And I went to the Singapore Chamber of Commerce networking night 20 years ago. I went up there and I met my mentor. And he asked me, what are you trying to do here? I said, I'm trying to get a job here.
And then I'm from the Niantic Technical University. I'm an engineer. I'm trying to get a job here, et cetera, et cetera. So the next question he asked me is, so how do I contact you? So I said, okay, I mean, the days where you don't have WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn, you use phone numbers, right? And mobile phone was new as well. Use SMSes and use emails. And so I took out a serviette from the hotel and I started writing my name, my contact number and my email.
So he took the... put in his pocket and he says, Ivan, you will never get a job in Hong Kong if you continue doing this. That's all he said. He didn't say anything else. That's all he said. He didn't say that why you shouldn't do this. He didn't say anything at all. He leave you with that. And I got back and I start thinking like, okay, well he said that I will not get a job if I continue doing this. What did he mean by that? What was he trying to tell me? And then...
But then before we left, he says that, okay, Ivan, I would like you to come again for the next networking night. I'll introduce you to my friends. That's it. So he told me two things. You will never get a job. You continue writing your name on your service. Second thing is, come again next week. I'll introduce you to my friends. So I thought I went back and think about it. And I thought, I have to do something because he has given me a hint, not an answer, but he has pulled me into a direction.
And I went and print name cards. name cards with my name and my contact number and my expected degree from where. That's it. And the following week when I got back to the networking night, I passed my name card to him and he was really delighted. I said, this is what I need you to do. This is what I was telling. I was trying to tell you, you need to have a name card if you want to network for a job.
And then just how a relationship been for the past 20 years, whenever he wants, he thinks I should go a certain direction. He would just prod you along with something. And from his experience, you think you should be doing this, but he's not going to tell you. And he's prod you along with something and he's coaching by not coaching actually, I would say coaching by experience, experiential coaching, I would say. And I think that's the challenge of a mentor.
Like how can you be something like this? And not just always giving the answers or always telling people like this, how we do it, or this how we do that. And I think that's the challenge in mentoring. How can you be a better coach in mentoring? That'd be the right challenge, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. How interesting. So what does that look like for you in the work that you do in mentoring?
Well, I think what I've been doing is like a lot of the undergraduates when they come to me, I ask them what they want to do at first. I mean, what do they really want to do? And a lot of them comes to me and say, I don't know. I sincerely don't know. And I think... And at the same time it's okay because I don't know as well when I was your age, when I was in your position, I don't know as well.
So then I say, but what is the kind of, you know, skills that you think that you would like to have before you go to university? I mean, I get out of university. So I think the other thing about mentoring is that because of experience, you know, how to help people acquire skills. But if you, if you tell them that you should have this skill or you should have networking skill, or you should have, communication skill, it just, it won't work.
But if you can bring them into the experience and they say, I, one of the things to tell me is that I hope I can learn how to talk to people. And then when they say that, what I do then is I will then introduce, bring them along to my networking events. When I go network for myself in the chambers or in the networking meetings I go to, I bring them along and I say, okay, I'll be here for an hour. I'll introduce you to some of my friends or some of my contacts here. And then I'll leave.
You can continue. Tell them that you are my mentee. And I do that for everyone for the ages to come. The second thing is that whenever you run an event that I think it will benefit them in helping to organize it, to give them some project skills and etc. I actually let them run the event for my company. So freehand, you know, tell me what you want to do. You do it. It's okay to make mistakes. You know, it doesn't kill anybody. It's fine. And we allow them to run projects.
So we have them, we have run some startups. events where we bring our mentees to come in to help with quite sizable of the work. That's the other thing that we mentor them that way. And the third thing that I mentor as well is, I remember very well, it's like, recently there is a new mentee that I have. She's from the school of nursing, but she's interested in technology. So I say, okay, let me see what I can help you with.
And... From then I contacted her of my contacts and I got her to intern at a startup that's doing medical technology, medtech startups. And then of course she experienced it and she come back, she said, I prefer to be in the nursing. So, so, so coaching, I mean, coaching, you can probably coach them, but with the elements of mentoring, you can bring in your experience and your networks to help. with the mentee.
So there's a balance between the two of them and you need one or the other to be effective. And I think as you're talking, the thing that comes to my mind is that it's an offer and it's a different kind of offer. So in coaching, we might offer a question, whereas what you're describing is you're offering an experience. Or as you said right at the beginning, your mentor, he was offering a hint about the napkin. Yes. But the challenge to mentors is that you always have because you have the answer.
Yeah. And you want to and you let the answer out. And but then a lot of mentors doesn't realize that your story happens 20 years ago. It might work for you. You may not work for them today. Yeah. And they have to go and find their way somehow. And it's best to coach them towards the direction that you want. Yeah. So completely changing the subject. Tell me about team mentoring.
Okay, so what's interesting is that I've been mentoring at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and what they have done is they always give me individual mentees, two or three, but it's always individual mentoring. And this year, what they've done is they actually scrapped the entire programme. They have run for 20 over years, which has been very effective. And then they formed teams. So they selected 30 students and of these 30 students, they formed a team of six. six teams of five, sorry.
So there are six teams with five members and each of these five students come from different faculty and it comes from different country. And then they are given two mentors. So, and this mentor will follow the team, but the team has things to do. They are supposed to do a project. They're supposed to go to workshops and they're supposed to choose a project that they want to champion.
And then they are doing a kind of like a core project together with the other teams, but generally each team has their own projects that they choose and they're supposed to work with their mentors towards achieving all these goals that have been presented to them. Thereafter, the winning team will then get to go on a global internship. So the university was defined.
Yeah. So it's like, they call it the leadership, global leadership program, but basically two mentors are co -working together to mentor this team of five. And that's a new format that they're using. It's kind of like a team mentoring because a team coaching because each individual comes, but they're all aligned towards a goal, which is a project that they champion. So I get a group that's championing sustainability now.
And of course, the hope is that they are going to produce learning that is greater than the individual learning. Yes. And each individual brings with them, yeah, and each individual brings them certain expertise from their own faculty to the table. So you can find lawyers, nurses, accountants, all in the group and they do something and they learn collectively, you know, the kind of things they need to do to make the project a success. It's very new and it's very exciting, I would say.
We definitely in a year's time need to get you back at the coaching end to talk about what it's looking like in reality over time. Sure. Because we just launched the event last week, last month, the end of last, towards the end of last month. So I'm still waiting for the mentees to contact me.
So one of the things that the mentees are supposed to take initiative to contact the mentors and they will come when they're ready instead of, you know, they're being trained to say that the mentor's time is precious. go to them when you already have something on hand. So I'm waiting for them to come and see what else we can do together. Wow. How exciting. So you're definitely coming back, please. Sure. About team mentoring. Yeah. I find it quite exciting as well. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds amazing.
Well, thank you so much for coming and having a conversation, Ivan. Yes, no problem. Thanks a lot, Claire. Thank you, everybody. Michael Kell, Gary Krotos. Matt Raywood, Nathan Whitbread and Mark Mercer, thank you for coming to The Coaching Inn. And everyone, thank you for listening. And also thank you Ivan Young. Everybody's contact details will be in the show notes. So thank you all very much for coming. Bye bye.
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